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H10 Language Independence


  
   

Fujitsu home page in Japanese, offering a link to the English version.

 
    ...you have mapped out most of your interaction design, and your system allows users to begin interacting with it even when it is not in its initial state - Easy Handover. But as you think about filling the system design with contents, the question of language invariably comes up.
 
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    Initially, most applications are designed with only one language for the user interface in mind. Exhibits in public spaces, however, often have international visitors who may not speak the local language.
 
   
 
   

Most interactive exhibits have to convey part of their message in textual (written or spoken) form, and therefore need to decide on a set of natural languages to support. It is not sufficient, however, to just allow language selection on the start page of an exhibit, without any further support, since new users may take over the exhibit when it is in some other interaction state. At least the way to language settings itself has to be clearly recognizable from any point within the system.


 
  Virtual Vienna: Language selector

As an example, in the Virtual Vienna exhibit, a link to the language selection is always available in a corner of the display showing the map of the city tour.

The same is true for web pages; the Japanese Fujitsu web site shown above always shows an English language selection button---an essential piece of help for users looking for information in English.

 
  Flags

Flags are a commonly observed way to represent language choices. As Pemberton [1998] points out, however, it may not be suitable to represent a language by a single flag. Many languages are the official language in several countries, many countries have several different spoken languages, and some even have more than one official language. Flag groups are sometimes used to solve the problem in a politically more correct way, but consider that there are about 200 flag symbols versus 4-5000 different spoken languages worldwide, so a flag suggests that you support all languages spoken in that country. A more natural solution is to put a list of all available language names, written in their own respective language, onto the interface object that leads to language selection.


 
    Therefore:

No matter in what state your interactive exhibit is, always provide a pictorial or multilingual way to access language settings.


 
   


 
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This pattern is taken from the book "A Pattern Approach to Interaction Design" (PAID) by Jan Borchers (John Wiley and Sons, Chichester, UK, 2001). Copyright 2001 John Wiley and Sons. Used by permission. See http://media.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/paid.html for more information. Online version by Susan Babutzka, ETH Zurich (subabutz_at_student.ethz.ch).